Environmental regulation and sectoral disparity in labor demand: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

The trade-off between environmental regulation and job creation has been a dilemma for policymakers in the past decades. Exploiting the enterprise-level sample data, we conduct a difference- in-difference-in-differences (DDD) specification to estimate the overall effect of China’s Two Control Zones (TCZ) policy on labor demand, measured as the number of enterprise-level employees. We find that the industrial enterprises in TCZ cities, where the TCZ policy has been implemented after 1998, employed fewer workers in more polluting industries. Furthermore, these employment effects are very heterogeneous among different enterprise ownerships and control zones. The TCZ policy significantly decreased the labor demand in private enterprises or those located in the Acid Rain Control Zones (ARCZ) but had little impact on their stateowned and foreign-invested counterparts or those located in the Sulfur Dioxide Pollution Control Zones (SPCZ)

Cost-effective Big Data Mining in the Cloud: A Case Study with K-means

Mining big data often requires tremendous computationalresources. This has become a major obstacle to broad applicationsof big data analytics. Cloud computing allows data scientists to access computationalresources on-demand for building their big data analytics solutions in the cloud

Tanshinone IIA mitigates peritoneal fibrosis by inhibiting EMT via regulation of TGF-β/smad pathway

Purpose: To explore the effects of tanshinone IIA (T-IIA) on Dianeal-N PD-4 (PDF)-induced expression of fibrogenic cytokines in human peritoneal mesothelial cells (HPMCs), and to elucidate the mechanisms of action involved. Methods: Seven groups of HPMCs were used in the study: control group, PDF group, T-IIA group, LY364947 group, and 2 transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) groups (TGF-β+ 50 μM T-IIA and TGF-β+ 100 μM T- IIA). The expression levels of mRNA and protein of TGF-β, smad2, smad7, α-smooth muscle actin(α-SMA), fibronectin, collagen І, E-cadherin, N-cadherin, matrix metalloprotein-2(MMP-2), and MMP-9 in the various groups were determined by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RTPCR) and Western blotting as appropriate. Results: The expressions of α-SMA, fibronectin, collagen І, TGF-β and smad2 were significantly upregulated in HPMCs by PDF treatment, but smad7 was down-regulated, relative to the control group (p < 0.01).These PDF-induced effects were reversed by T-IIA (p < 0.05). Inhibition of TGF-β/smad pathway by LY364947 treatment led to significant decrease in the expressions of fibrosis-related proteins, when compared with PDF group (p < 0.05). TGF-β treatment also produced numerous spindleshaped HPMCs characteristic of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). However, this morphological transition was alleviated, and the expression levels of EMT-related proteins were significantly downregulated by exposure to the two doses of T-IIA (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Tanshinone IIA inhibits EMT in HPMCs by regulating TGF-β/smad pathway, thus mitigating peritoneal fibrosis. Therefore, T-IIA has promising potential as a new drug for the treatment of peritoneal dialysis (PD)-induced fibrosis. Keywords: Peritoneal dialysis, Peritoneal fibrosis, Tanshinone IIA, Epithelial-mesenchymal transitio

STAR: A Structure and Texture Aware Retinex Model

© 2020 IEEE. Retinex theory is developed mainly to decompose an image into the illumination and reflectance components by analyzing local image derivatives. In this theory, larger derivatives are attributed to the changes in reflectance, while smaller derivatives are emerged in the smooth illumination. In this paper, we utilize exponentiated local derivatives (with an exponent γ ) of an observed image to generate its structure map and texture map. The structure map is produced by been amplified with γ \u3e 1, while the texture map is generated by been shrank with γ \u3c 1. To this end, we design exponential filters for the local derivatives, and present their capability on extracting accurate structure and texture maps, influenced by the choices of exponents γ. The extracted structure and texture maps are employed to regularize the illumination and reflectance components in Retinex decomposition. A novel Structure and Texture Aware Retinex (STAR) model is further proposed for illumination and reflectance decomposition of a single image. We solve the STAR model by an alternating optimization algorithm. Each sub-problem is transformed into a vectorized least squares regression, with closed-form solutions. Comprehensive experiments on commonly tested datasets demonstrate that, the proposed STAR model produce better quantitative and qualitative performance than previous competing methods, on illumination and reflectance decomposition, low-light image enhancement, and color correction. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/csjunxu/STAR

Community attitudes towards Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) and their prey species in Yanbian, Jilin province, a region of northeast China where tigers are returning

Community attitudes towards large carnivores are of central importance to their conservation in human-dominated landscapes. In this study, we evaluate community attitudes and perceptions towards the Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) and bears (Ursus thibetanus and Ursus arctos), as well as their prey species, namely sika deer (Cervus nippon), roe deer and wild boar (Sus scrofa), in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin province, northeast China. We surveyed 139 households and found that community members' perceptions of large carnivores and their prey species were influenced by their predominant economic activities; their prior interactions with wildlife; their household income level; and whether they were either long-term residents of Yanbian or had migrated to the region from elsewhere in China. We recorded fairly neutral attitudes towards large carnivores among the communities we surveyed, but strongly negative attitudes were shown towards wild boar, particularly where respondents had lost agricultural products to crop raiding by wild boar. We recommend conservation stakeholders in northeast China utilise this finding to encourage support for large carnivore recovery and conservation by targeting messaging around the importance of the tiger as a key predator of wild boar in the ecosystem. Furthermore, our findings suggest that government provided compensation paid for cattle lost to large carnivore predation (notably, by tigers) may be helping to reduce animosity from cattle owners towards large carnivores. However, we also highlight that compensation for loss of livestock is therefore performing a useful role in mitigating human-wildlife conflict, that there are potentially unintended consequences of the current compensation program, for example it fails to dissuade livestock grazing in protected areas

Diabetic Osteoporosis: A Review of Its Traditional Chinese Medicinal Use and Clinical and Preclinical Research

Aim. The incidence of diabetic osteoporosis (DOP) is increasing due to lack of effective management over the past few decades. This review aims to summarize traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) suitability in the pathogenesis and clinical and preclinical management of DOP. Methods. Literature sources used were from Medline (Pubmed), CNKI (China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database), and CSTJ (China Science and Technology Journal Database) online databases. For the consultation, keywords such as diabetic osteoporosis (DOP), TCM, clinical study, animal experiment, toxicity, and research progress were used in various combinations. Around 100 research papers and reviews were visited. Results. Liver-spleen-kidney insufficiency may result in development of DOP. 18 clinical trials are identified to use TCM compound prescriptions for management of patients with DOP. TCM herbs and their active ingredients are effective in preventing the development of DOP in streptozotocin (STZ) and alloxan as well as STZ combined with ovariectomy insulted rats. Among them, most frequently used TCM herbs in clinical trials are Radix Astragali, Radix et Rhizoma Salviae Miltiorrhizae, Radix Rehmanniae Preparata, and Herba Epimedii. Some of TCM herbs also exhibit toxicities in clinical and preclinical research. Conclusions. TCM herbs may act as the novel sources of anti-DOP drugs by improving bone and glucolipid metabolisms. However, the pathogenesis of DOP and the material base of TCM herbs still merit further study